VIII. 1821. 1821. ness, had scarcely been noticed even by the United States, CHAP. most interested in preventing them. They were for the most part made on the shores which had been discovered by Captain Cook and Vancouver, so that, on the footing of priority of discovery, the best claim to them belonged to Great Britain. But England already possessed an enormous territory, amounting to four million square miles, of which scarce a tenth was capable of cultivation, and her government was indifferent to the settlement of Russians on the coast of the Pacific. The consequence was that they were allowed quietly to take possession, and on the 16/28 September the Czar issued a ukase defining the Sept. 28, limits of the Russian territory in America, which embraced twice as much as the whole realm of France. The ukase also confined to Russian subjects the right of fishing along the coast from Behring Straits to the southern cape of the island of Ouroff, and forbade all foreign vessels to fish within a hundred miles of the coast, under pain of confiscation of their cargo. These assumed rights have not hitherto been called in question, but as the Anglo-Saxons in America are as aspiring as the Muscovites, and grow- Sept. 28, ing even more rapidly, it is not likely that this will long 1821; Ann. continue; and it is not impossible that the two great 304, 305; races which appear to divide the world are destined to ivi. 189. be first brought into collision on the shores of the Pacific.1 The increasing jealousy of the Czar at liberal opinions, and the secret societies by which it was attempted to guerre religieuse contre la Turquie; mais j'ai cru remarquer, dans les troubles du Péloponése, le signe révolutionnaire; dès lors je me suis abstenu. Que n'at-on fait pour rompre l'Alliance? On a cherché tour à tour à me donner des provocations; on à blesser mon amour-propre; on m'a outragé ouvertement. On me connaissait bien mal, si l'on a cru que mes principes ne tenaient qu'à des vanités, ou pouvaient céder à des ressentiments. Non, je ne me séparerai jamais des monarques auxquels je me suis uni. Il doit être permis aux Rois, d'avoir des alliances publiques, pour se défendre contre les sociétés secrètes. Qu'est-ce qui pourrait me tenter? Qu' ai-je besoin d'accroître mon empire? La Providence n'a pas mis à mes ordres huit cent mille soldats, pour satisfaire mon ambition; mais pour protéger la religion, la morale, la justice; et pour faire régner ces principes d'ordre, sur lesquels repose la société humaine.”—CHATEAUBRIAND, Congrès de Vérone, i. 221, 222. 1 Ukase, Hist. iv. Biog. Univ. VIII. 1823. 90. of free masons' and other secret societies. Oct. 15. Aug. 18, 1823. CHAP. propagate them in his dominions, was evinced in the same year by a decree suppressing the order of Free-masons throughout the whole of his dominions. In spite, howSuppression ever, of every precaution that could be taken, the secret societies continued and multiplied; and it was ere long ascertained that they embraced not only many of the first nobles in the country, but, what was far more dangerous, several of the officers high in the army, and even in the imperial guard. Obscure intimations of the existence of a vast conspiracy were frequently sent to the government, but not in so distinct a form as to enable them to act upon it until 1823, when a ukase was issued, denouncing, under the severest penalties, all secret societies, especially in Poland; and a number of leaders of the "Patriotic Society," in particular Jukasinsky, Dobrogoyski, Machynicki, and several others, chiefly Poles, were arrested, and sent to Siberia. It was hoped at the time that the danger was thus removed, but it proved just the reverse. The seizure of these chiefs only served to warn the others of the necessity of the most rigorous secresy, and gave additional proof, as it seemed to them, of the necessity for a forcible reformation in the state. The secret societies rapidly spread, especially amongst the highest in rank, the first in patriotic spirit, and the most generous in feeling, both in the civil and military service; a melancholy state of things, when those who should be the guardians of order are leagued together for its overthrow, but the natural result of a state of society such as then existed in 1 Ann. Hist. Russia, where the power of the sovereign, entirely despotic, vi. 381,383; was rested on the blind submission of the vast majority lvi. 189; of the nation, and a longing for liberal institutions and Hist. Int. the enjoyment of freedom existed only in a very limited circle of the most highly-educated classes, but was felt there in the utmost intensity.1 Schnitzler, de la Russie, i. 90, 91. The desponding feelings of the Czar, occasioned by the discovery that his efforts for the amelioration of his country were only met by secret societies banded together for CHAP. 1823. 91. failure of anthropic his destruction, was much aggravated by the failure of some of his most favourite philanthropic projects. In many of the provinces in which the peasants had received from the sovereign or their lords the perilous gift of freedom, they had General suffered severely from the change. The newly enfranchised the empe peasants, in many places, regretted the servitude which had ror's philsecured to them an asylum in sickness or old age. In the projects. province of Witepsk, where the change had been carried to a great extent, they refused to pay the capitationtax imposed on them in lieu of their bondage, alleging that they had not the means of doing so; and besieged the empress-dowager, who was known to adhere to old ideas, with the loudest complaints on the "fatal gift" which they had received. So serious did the disorders become among the new freemen, that they were only appeased by the quartering of a large military force on the disturbed districts. Russia suffered even more than the other countries of Europe, in this and the preceding year, from the depreciation of prices, which fell with unmitigated severity on the holders of the immense stores of its rude produce. Banks, by order of the emperor, were established in many places to relieve the distresses of the surcharged proprietors, but they did not meet with general success; and the advances meant to stimulate in- vi. 319,321; dustry, were too often applied only to feed luxury or i. 373. minister to depravity.1 1 Ann. Hist. Tegoborski, flood at St Petersburg. The external transactions of Russia in regard to the Con- 92. gress of Verona, the Greek revolution, and the Turkish Dreadful war, will be recounted more suitably in the chapters which ar relate to those important subjects. But there are a few internal events in Russia which deserve notice before the melancholy period when Alexander paid the common debt of mortality. The first of these was the dreadful inundation at St Petersburg, in November 1824. The emperor had just returned from a visit to Orenburg, and the south-eastern provinces of his empire, to his palace at Tzarskocelo near St Petersburg, when a terrible hurri CHAP. cane arose, which, sweeping over the whole of the Baltic, VIII. strewed its shores with wrecks, and inflicted the most 1824. Nov. 19. 1 Schnitz ler, Hist. Int. i. 85; Ann. Hist. vii. 386, 387. 93. frightful devastation on all the harbours with which it is studded. But the catastrophe at the capital was so frightful, that for some hours it was menaced with entire destruction, and all but accomplished a remarkable prophecy, made to Peter the Great when he commenced its construction, that it would one day perish under the waves of the Baltic.1 * To understand how this happened, it is necessary to Description obtain a clear idea of the local circumstances and situation tion of St of St Petersburg. When Peter selected the islands at the Petersburg. mouth of the river Neva, which, descending from the vast of the situa expanse of the Lake Ladoga, empties itself in a mighty stream into the Baltic, for the site of his future capital, he was influenced entirely by the suitableness of its situation for a great harbour, of which he severely felt the want, as Archangel, on the frozen shores of the White Sea, was the only port at that period in his dominions. Carried away by this object, which, no doubt, was a very important one, he entirely overlooked the probable unhealthiness of the situation, where a metropolis rested like Venice on marshy islands, the highest part of which was only elevated a few feet above the branches of the river with which they were surrounded; the extreme cold which must ensue in winter from the close proximity of enorvii. 386; mous ice-fields, and the probability of its being exposed to the greatest danger from a sudden rising of the waters of the river owing to a high wind of long con 2 Ann. Hist. Schnitzler, i. 84. * A curious incident, highly characteristic of Peter, occurred at this time. "When the foundation of his new capital was commencing on the desolate islands of the Neva, which are now covered by the fortress of Cronstadt and the superb palaces of St Petersburg, Peter observed, by accident, a tree marked at a considerable height from the ground. He called a peasant of Finland, who was working near, and asked him what the mark was for?' 'It is the highest level,' replied the peasant, which the water reached in the inundation of 1680. You lie!' cried the Czar in a fury; what you say is impossible ;' and seizing a hatchet, he with his own hands cut down the tree, hoping thereby to extinguish alike all memory of the former flood, and guard against the recurrence of a similar calamity."-SCHNITZLER, i. 85-86. 6 VIII. 1824. tinuance blowing in the waters of the Baltic, and back CHAP. those which usually flow from the Lake Ladoga. It was this which had previously occurred on more than one occasion, and which now threatened the capital with destruction. 94. Regardless of these dangers, and of the enormous consumption of human life which took place during the build- Continued. ing of the city, from the unhealthiness of the situation, which is said to have amounted to a hundred thousand persons, the Czar drove on the work with the impetuosity which formed so leading a feature in his character, and at length the basis of a great city was laid amidst the watery waste. On the spongy soil and low swamps, which had previously encumbered the course of the Neva, the modern capital arose. Vast blocks of granite, brought from the adjacent plains of Finland, where they are strewed in huge masses over the surface, faced the quays; palaces were erected, of more fragile materials, on the surface, within the isles; and the Perspective Newski is perhaps now the most imposing strect in Europe, from the beauty of its edifices and the magnitude of its dimensions. The splendid façade of the Admiralty, the Winter Palace of the emperor, the noble Cathedral of St Isaac-the statue of Peter the Great, resting on a single block of granite of 1800 tons weightthe noble pillar of Alexander, formed of a single stone of the same material, the largest in the world, combined in a single square, now overpower the imagination of the beholder by their magnificence, and the impression they convey of the power of the sovereign by whose energy these marvels have been made to spring up amidst the watery wilderness. But the original danger, arising from the lowness of the situation, and its liability to inundations, still continues. Great as it is, the power of the Czar is not so great as that of the Baltic waves. From the main channel, where the Neva majestically flows through superb quays of granite, surmounted by piles of palaces, branch off, as from the great canal at Venice, numerous |